From Jacob Elordi to Dua Lipa, HELLO! India peeks into these celebrity bookshelves

Airport lounges, coffee runs, red-eye flights; the paparazzi don't just snap outfits anymore. Somewhere along the way, the book in a celebrity's hand has become just as photographable as their outfits. Interviews now routinely dip into "what are you reading," press junkets double as impromptu book recommendations, and a few stars have gone as far as building entire book clubs around their taste. Reading, it turns out, is the new flex—it's quieter than a designer bag, but somehow far more telling. HELLO! India dives into what's on the nightstands of the people we love on the big screen.

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1. Kendall Jenner

Jenner's choices lean into rawer, more fragmented storytelling. Tonight I'm Someone Else by Chelsea Hodson is a collection of essays that moves through identity, desire, and self-image with an unflinching, almost confessional honesty. Literally Show Me a Healthy Person by Darcie Wilder follows a similarly disjointed, diary-style stream-of-consciousness that's unpolished, and deeply of-the-internet. It's an interesting pivot for someone whose public image has always felt so curated, and maybe that's exactly the appeal.

2. Jacob Elordi

Elordi has quietly built a reputation as one of Hollywood's more literary leading men, and his picks back it up. Prima Facie by Suzie Miller was a one-woman play before becoming a novel, which follows a sharp, successful barrister whose relationship with the justice system fractures after a deeply personal reckoning. It's the kind of read that sits with you long after the last page. Alongside it, Weak in Comparison to Dreams by James Elkins takes a stranger, more meditative turn. Part philosophy, part art history, part fiction; it follows a man's unravelling and search for meaning across continents and disciplines. Not exactly beach reads, and that seems to be precisely the point.

3. Dua Lipa

Of everyone on this list, Dua Lipa has taken her love of books the furthest—she runs her own book club called Service95. Her newsletter-turned-cultural-platform regularly spotlights fiction and non-fiction works from around the world. Her recent picks here reflect that same range. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar follows a young, sober Iranian-American poet chasing meaning, mortality, and his own complicated inheritance, told with a wit that keeps devastating subject matter from ever feeling heavy-handed. Free by Lea Ypi, meanwhile, is a memoir of coming of age in the final days of communist Albania, which traces political history filtered through a genuinely personal lens. Together, the picks say a lot about a woman who clearly doesn't read to switch off, but to stay switched on.

4. Cillian Murphy

Murphy's reading list feels like an extension of the roles he's known for—quiet intensity, emotional weight, nothing performative about it. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy is a cult classic, following a chaotic, self-destructive American law student adrift in postwar Dublin that is brash, darkly funny, and considered one of the great comic novels of its era. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter takes the opposite tone entirely: a slim, genre-bending meditation on loss, narrated in part by a crow who arrives to help (and haunt) a grieving family. Two very different books, both unmistakably literary icons.

5. Twinkle Khanna

It helps that Khanna is an author herself, and it shows in her taste. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link is a collection of short stories that blur the line between the ordinary and the uncanny with ghosts, doubles, and strange technology woven into otherwise recognisable lives. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, a Booker Prize finalist, digs into the complicated, often uncomfortable bond between a mother and daughter as memory and resentment blur together. Both picks reward patience, which tracks for a writer who clearly enjoys books that don't hand you easy answers.

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6. Ananya Panday

Panday's picks sit closer to contemporary, character-driven fiction. Good Material by Dolly Alderton follows a heartbreak from the other side; a young man's unravelling after a breakup, told with Alderton's signature blend of humour and honesty. Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors follows three sisters navigating grief and estrangement in the aftermath of losing a fourth that's messy, emotional, and deeply modern in its portrayal of sisterhood. Sharp, current, and very readable; it's a fitting reflection of an actress building her identity in real time.

7. Priyanka Chopra Jonas

Chopra Jonas's choices are unsurprisingly ambitious in scope. Becoming by Michelle Obama needs little introduction. The memoir that's sold tens of millions of copies worldwide traces Obama's path from Chicago's South Side to the White House with a candour that made it an instant cultural touchstone. All Fours by Miranda July is an unconventional, boundary-pushing novel about a woman who abandons a planned road trip and instead holes up in a motel, unravelling everything she thought she knew about her own life. Together, they show a reader unafraid to sit with both the aspirational and the uncomfortable.

8. Saif Ali Khan

Khan rounds out the list with a genuinely eclectic pairing. Black River by Nilanjana S. Roy is a literary crime novel set in rural India, using a single murder to unpack caste, land, and power in ways that stretch well beyond the mystery itself. Alongside it sits Ayn Rand's philosophy of individualism and self-interest—the kind of ideologically-charged reading that tends to spark as much debate as admiration. It's an unexpected combination, and maybe that's exactly why it's memorable.

What ties this list together isn't genre or even taste; it's intention. These aren't algorithm-fed bestsellers picked for a photo op; they're memoirs, literary fiction, essays, and philosophy that ask something of the reader. Celebrities have always shaped what we wear and watch. Increasingly, they're shaping what we read too; one papped book cover, one book club pick, one offhand interview answer at a time.

Text by Mriganka Singh 

Edited by Sabrina Mathews

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